How to do keyword research without paid tools

Every “you must buy Ahrefs/Semrush to do SEO” pitch conveniently skips one fact: Google already tells you, for free, exactly what people are searching for. The paid tools are more convenient and give you precise volume figures, but for a small business deciding what to write next, you genuinely don’t need to spend a penny. Here’s how to get the same raw material out of free sources.

You can do complete keyword research for free using Google autocomplete, People Also Ask, Google Search Console, Google Trends and the free Keyword Planner, then grouping the phrases by search intent and prioritising the ones with clear buyer demand and realistic competition.

Start with seed topics, not keywords

Before you open any tool, list the plain-English topics your business covers. Think like a customer, not a marketer:

• The services you sell (“boiler repair”, “wedding photography”)
• The problems customers have (“tap leaking”, “website too slow”)
• The questions you get asked on the phone and by email
• The towns and areas you serve

These “seed” topics are the starting point. Every free tool below expands them into dozens of real search phrases.

Mine the free Google sources

Google hands you keyword ideas in several places, all free:

Two more zero-cost sources: the autocomplete on YouTube and Amazon (great for product and how-to phrasing), and AnswerThePublic’s free daily searches, which visualise question-based queries around a topic.

Group keywords by search intent

A list of 200 phrases is useless until you sort it. The fastest way is by intent:

Match each keyword to the right page type. A how-to question needs an article; a “[service] near me” query needs a service page. Getting this wrong is the most common reason good keywords never rank. For shaping the page itself, see on-page SEO basics.

Prioritise what you can actually win

Volume isn’t the goal. The goal is searches you can rank for that bring the right people:

1. Check intent first. A buying phrase beats a vague high-volume one every time.
2. Eyeball the competition. Search the keyword. If page one is all national giants, pick a longer, more specific phrase.
3. Favour long-tail and local. “Affordable garden office [town]” is easier to win and more profitable than “garden office”.
4. Spot the gaps. A question that keeps appearing in People Also Ask with no good local page answering it is your opening.

Turn the list into pages

Map one primary keyword to one page, add related questions as subheadings, and write to genuinely answer the search. For which topics convert, see blog topics customers search for and the wider basics in what is SEO.

Spend an hour with these free sources this week, build a list of 20 to 30 realistic phrases, and you’ll have a content plan worth months of writing, without paying for a single tool.